[b-hebrew] Fw: WAYYIQTOL

Peter:
What I rejected was not Hebrew phonological
reconstruction per se, but a particular theory
of phonological reconstruction.
Admittedly, the evidence I have is pretty
sketchy, pretty much restricted to Tanakh and
the New Testament.
For example, I noticed that the Samech had the
same shape and place in the alphabet as the
Greek Xi. Yet in modern Hebrew it has the same
pronunciation as the Sin.
What I noticed in glancing at historical
linguistics, is that when a language is a
living language and its spelling fluid,
letters tend not to change their
pronunciations in response to pronunciation
shifts, rather spellings tend to change.
Examples include Classical Greek thalattes
changing to Koiné Greek thalasses, and the
German Stratte changing to Straße. But in
a fossil language, where spellings are largely
frozen, it is the letters that change their
values in response to pronunciation shifts. An
example is the Latin -tion suffix, where in
Latin the -t- originally had the t sound,
later in response to fossilized spelling its
pronunciation changed to ts and now in
English it has the sh sound.
Now back to Samech, that it shares a
pronunciation with Sin is a clue (not proof)
that one or both letters had changed their
pronunciations due to Hebrew being a fossil
language. In Ezra and Nehemiah,
transliterations of Persian names into Hebrew
have a Samech in some places where Greek has a
Xi (some of the Hebrew transliterations have a
combination letter, X$, similar to the x
sound), but Aramaic had already lost the x
sound so those places that had a Samech in
Hebrew had a Sin/Shin in Aramaic.
In the New Testament, the transliteration of
names again indicates that there was a shift
even then still in progress, with Galilee
apparently lagging behind Judea (hence Peters
Galilean accent?). In particular, notice the
bifurcation of the BGDKPT and Sin/Shin
pronunciations. (These clues are better
preserved in the Byzantian tradition of New
Testament manuscripts than the Nestlé
version.)
I run the risk of building a castle on the
foundation of a molehill, the evidence I have
seen is that sparse, but as sparse as that
evidence is, it contradicts the theory of
Hebrew phonological reconstruction that I
rejected.
Karl W. Randolph.
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk at qaya.org>
> On 10/03/2004 00:13, Karl Randolph wrote:
>> >Peter:
> >
> >There was a consonental pronunciation change,
> >was any of that reflected in the writing?
> >
> >
>> What change in consonantal pronunciation? When? What is your evidence? I
> remember that a few months ago you thoroughly rejected the usefulness of
> most of the sources for reconstructing the phonological history of
> Hebrew. Have you had a change of heart? Or have you constructed
> different theories, and if so on what evidence?
>> --
> Peter Kirk
>peter at qaya.org (personal)
>peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
>http://www.qaya.org/>
--
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